Current

Don’t ever kid yourself. The story is perceived from one lens but you are many aspects if you pay attention. With language so much can be understood and in place of ranting today I’m going to share what I can in what I can communicate with positivity vs negatives.

Everything bases on contrast in art and it took me years to understand as someone who grew up based largely in the English language basing perception of positive and negative meaning emotion.

It was only in my adult years introduced to the language of art speak with positive and negative as terms of communicating ideas that would take time to understand. I felt like an idiot among art people who understood and would wield art language over my head while all the time for lack of a better term, sucking, at what they did and try to make me feel inferior.

Some of us I suppose draw ourselves into a calling from a current we can connect with and it takes time like whirls in the water. Like a current picked up from the sea that feeds the trees and then comes back to you.

Current (blue blur)

In the industrial age it made a sea of people fighting and social media equally so but at the end of the day we do all we can to keep our heads up. The tide goes in and it goes out with rising swells.

When I was a teenager I was motivated by reading about M.C. Escher who spent a decade to understand geometry to make art with an idea he had he knew he wanted to realize. His work influences so much work today and he’s a classic example of an artist who was suffering in his time.

What has changed in the modern era is how the value of art has risen to an explosive rate like nothing else and I’m amazed to see it and be part of it. Today if you learn to code you can write patterns and it may take a long climb and feel like hell, like getting that chlorine sting in your nose or sea water but in best of times a part of that tide will pull you up from the undertow.

I’m committing to this to attribute inspiration from deep roots of what drives the art not so much based on a timeline but connections that help me keep my head above water.

The time is now

There is a recent podcast I did with Allison Sheridan about my experience and challenges as a Native American making art under the pressure of ideals that require in many instances, tradition.

I should say here that it’s no secret that I am a tech nerd and have been for years. Even so I did grow up on a reservation that is somewhat unique where we as Puyallup people did stand our ground and were able to retain a large part of our lands during ‘expansion’.

It was my nieces brithday party when I was thinking about this idea that had been running through my mind for years and to share with you what an artist mind is like here it goes.

I don’t know what it’s like to think outside my own head and so I think of myself as ‘normal’ and it’s only by my interaction with everyone to realize “I’m not”.

I guess it’s why I gravitated towards Temple Grandin when I saw a movie trailer about her and patterns. At the same time I love music and I feel the importance of it to communicate what we can’t say in words always or in combination of it with resonance.

You might ask why I’d open with an image of canoes with lines taking Temple as a figure of interest. It’s stemmed from thinking different. Different in that I’m not pretending to write things from a way I think people want but from a perspective I should just say inspired from sources like Allison who once, in my poor translation said it was her time to share a message with tech people what would make friends at parties bore to death. This in itself is a beauty to know a world exists where people can share ideas and passion for things in like mind. At the same time I hope a world exists for dialogue of differences.

In my small world I learned about formline art as an expression of making art as an Indigenous person. In time I learned a vast language (visually) about the power of image. In that I look back now as a sculptor the power of my first lesson of making a simple spoon.

In that spoon it was modeled after ones my ancestors made.

This is where art and form vs function have odds at each-other.

I was thinking about how form and function again are a thing and that idea that something someone uses in the modern day is perceived in America as their property but there are so many legal battles of them whether tech or intellectual properties.

In the meantime as the 1 percent of a population we get to see this all play out and be vilified but get push back.

What I can say is I’m inspired by artists of my region like Alison Bremner and Sonny Assu who venture uncharted waters with the power of a visual language that forges a path for the bleeding edge or our small side of the art world to be heard and seen.

Few people have inspired me as much as my relation in art and her powerful paintings. A capture of our traditions and values and emotions all in visuals.

Malynn Foster is as much an inspiration to me as was George David (Nuu-chah-nulth) . A sister who stood with me in the shadows when our art and culture were looked down on for it’s value of message. This life is not monetary. There is nothing would trade in the world for making my first spoon I carved gifted to my aunt when she smiled knowing I did the work.

You can’t manufacture this craft but you can send a message that resonates beyond that.

I didn’t choose this life, this life chose me and I am rewarded by these crossed paths everyday because life is fleeting.

Karen Reed woven coffee cup cover

In words of “Lock Shot” we Natives were always modern. Roots underground grow up and tie together.

Adaptation and the Civilized

I’m not one to make political art or known for that at least largely but there are things that have to break the surface. I don’t consider myself a brand or a company I’m just doing what an artist does and that is create. It’s less common I’ve learned in recent years that one can appreciate things from a far spectrum that don’t fall within a genre or group. As someone who grew up playing music from my teen years I valued the musicians who would look at the value of that range. I recall a friend who was a guitarist who appreciated the pop music in the likes of Hall and Oates as much as he could appreciate Tom Waits.

In my small world of art in genre there are factions that tie into culture and actually stem from a long line of beliefs. The reason I note this is that like anything with time, things change and like the tide rising and falling out there comes change like the sands of times on the shore.

I can’t say when I first saw or heard about any music festival where people wore headdresses but it became a thing for a time. Coachella was definitely part of that ultimately and when I noted to people how much it dug into me they said I was being too sensitive. It was just a few days ago when I listened to the Joe Rogan podcast with David Choe as a guest when he shared a story about being at a crosswalk in LA the day Parasite won the academy award with calls coming over to him in congratulations celebrating a milestone he had nothing to do with.

It made me recall a similar story from comedian Aziz Ansari on Jimmy Kimmel sharing something that has since been taken down but the jist was that same sentiment. When Slumdog Millionaire won awards people were patting him on the back as to say aren’t you proud and he admitted yeah I felt pride and his response was great. “wow, are white people must be hyped all the time, Back to the Future, that’s us! Titanic, that’s us! Every movie but Slumdog and Boyz in the Hood, that’s US”!

It brought me back to this idea Choe talked about though about American Asians keeping their heads down because they have threat of being ‘sent back’ to where they come from. Equally it brought up this story from Sherman Alexie who was interviewed once sharing a story about being at a car accident scene when he venture out of his car and confronted by someone who told him “go back to where you came from” and despite that context it was clear he didn’t mean go back to your car it had to do with him being, NOT white.

I could wax on and be judged for whining about things but for whatever reason I feel compelled to share this experience as someone who is Native American who has felt like a stranger in the land of my ancestry.

I remember this from my early friends of high school when people would talk about going somewhere after graduation to backpack and travel. I responded to this friend with the notion I’d want to travel in time where I would not feel like a stranger. The reaction was puzzling and very well understood until I explained that people with Irish roots romanticize Ireland and so on and so on with cultures and places.

It brings me to this revelation of what bothers me about our culture as costume. When I went to Taiwan and met the people I experienced how frustrated they were at how they were perceived as manufactures and slave labor. They retained their language and culture in a way on number levels far greater than our Native population. They looked to us in reverence for our survival amidst great pressures to assimilate and disappear. But like oil and water there are some things that don’t mix.

Ultimately for whatever reason it might be, the language and culture are still here. This is not to say that life is perfect by living in ways that once were. In fact I think of the teacher I learned German from sharing a story about a small town on the East Coast who isolated so much they retained old Germanic language so when Germans came to see them they were locked in a time period that seemed foreign.

When I do public work in way of sculpture whether residency or demonstration I’m often met by people who judge the tools I used even though the majority of them are of my making based on traditional methods replacing stone with steel. Steel that I have worked into shapes myself that were developed for the wood types we use for sculpture here, mostly Alder and Red cedar.

The most common critique is how I am doing something, wrong. That I am not doing things as were read about in books using stones and beaver teeth to execute ‘authentic Native American art’. This judgment I’ve learned to keep my head down but over time I shed my skin to not live in a book or restrict myself to confines of perceptions of outsiders because in art there are no rules.

A friend who worked in language from Vancouver, BC told me to refrain from using the term ‘evolve’ because it leans into the concept that we are primitive and uncivilized. This was a large basis of the Alaska-Yukon Pacific exposition that posed non Eurocentric American culture as superior. It intentionally excluded Coast Salish people and pitted Filipino culture against Japanese as a high contrast. The idea was to say to western cultures new to the territory that Native American culture was obsolete and that other cultures were to aim at a way of life that was an answer.

In this time of ‘lock down’, I’ve had time to reflect and think about these things and remember that what we call tradition stems from our values. A way of doing something is not done for the sake of doing it a certain way but has to as it is universally understood ‘form follows function’.

The world is in a state of realizing one cannot eat money for sustenance. In words that I believe are also cross racial in concept are captured in the idea of forging iron by fire.

If the idea is truly survival of the fittest, then what remains of our Native people here, we’ve endured many fires and extreme policies to wash us away like sands with the tides. But like a rising tide or where lightning touches the water, it’s like our version of Thunderbird known to be small but calling out a storm.

This is not a call for war this is a call to know the land itself has been a conductor, a conduit for a moment to pause and ask where we are heading if we are accelerating as we are.

I rarely share works in progress but I feel a need to here regarding coyote. When I heard about coyotes in the cities under lock down I came back to this again and again. Coyote from my understanding brought fire to the people and was cast out not unlike Promethius. This is a story though of endurance and transformation. Where in these times we can learn from so many sources and be something different.

This idea I’m working on now is exploring paintings inspired from technical aspects of studying my great grandmothers oil work and to remix them into something that tells a story that is not still life but real life.

This concept has to do with knowing we all have fears and we turn our tail but at the same time there is something we need inside. To love oneself and know not to take blame for fires you didn’t make and be made the villain or victim. The life we live is a path of many stories where the roads cross and it is far from linear. It is about adaptation and survival.

Lessons

When I graduated high school my aunt gave me a book that my son found and teased me about recently in our last move not long ago. Oh the places you’ll go by Dr. Seuss. It made me smile to know how universal the idea is really because none of us truly know where we are going or what is going to happen but that is part of it all really.

In times that I’ve felt deep frustration or doubt in myself I find little treasures left behind of something someone said or a song shared or even a shard of glass washed up on the beach shaped into a necklace as a gift when there was nothing to give but time and energy.

I’ve learned a lot from isolation and missing more than ever the connection to the people I’ve met over my travels and those I look forward to seeing again. I’m grateful today for my uncles who were loggers who taught me how to make tools, forge steel and make something from what seemed like nothing.

Bernie Gobin, known as Kai Kai in our language Bluejay was one of the great pillars in making things. In this time I’m finding my own voice in this very blog remixing the songs that I grew up with into something that isn’t new but lasting.

Kai Kai

There are variations of our language that call bluejay Kai Kai and Sky Kai (phonetical) all the same it’s mostly understood by the dialect speakers. I’m reminded of how powerful some things are over time like waves washing over the rough edges of rocks to make them smooth or the river beds alike. They are still rocks and useful to us all the same. I recall the movie Indecent Proposal where Woody Harellson’s character makes a speech as an architect saying “even a brick want’s to be something”.

Much of Indigenous culture comes from the idea of animism and I can’t speak as a professor but an artist who has been lucky enough to meet people and learn from the experiences they’ve shared.

For whatever the reason my work comes back to the moon and the water often. It’s very much a part of growing up where I have but at the same time universal in many ways because even if one grows up in the desert one needs a body of water to survive and the moon is perceived all around.

I get back to this idea of gratitude that washes over me today. I didn’t know where I was going when I started out but there was a point I realized I needed to get there and I’m still going. That is something that may not make sense in the interpretation of traditional English language speaking but nonetheless important and maybe better said in pictures over words.

As someone who identifies with the nocturnal mostly I’m moved by the songs of the early birds when the dawn is about to break. When the dew is on the grass and I keep going at times to finish the idea I’ve committed to. Walking my dog, smelling the flowers not because I’m wide awake but the notion that I’m driven to continue if I’m called on to do so.

Sharing a lesson from the men who gave me great value to strive to learn I made this with my son that has ties to Kai Kai and dxwsqius alike.

More than words can say

I never dreamt I would see our culture and language come back in the ways it has. All the same I recall carving the first story pole where two songs came along to tie the meaning of innovation. After my grandfather taught me to make paper planes I was fascinated with the idea of what it would be to be a bird. It comes back to me now for the idea of new perspective. The story poles and totem history in a practical sense was made to be seen from one view point looking up.

Today these sculptures are fewer and with this time of my work I am blessed with the work to do a commission for Seattle Children's Hospital. I’m also feeling rewarded for small insights the built up over the years of my youth with two stories in particular.

I am grieving the loss of an Auntie figure who taught me about the butterflies and how they were more than fluttering wings, fleeting but treasures of how life itself is fleeting. That stayed with me for all my life and came back to me thinking back on how I would sit on her lap on a ballpark bench sketching on a lined notepad.

When I was called upon to carve a story pole for my people when I was 19 I had no idea what to think of the pressure and I’d only made a few carvings but Jack Moses said it was my duty and I didn’t really have a choice. So on that I took it on with my family name on the line. In that time I got to meet Buffy Sainte Marie who shared this song with me (not of the two songs I’m noting but equally powerful).

I was overwhelmed with the task at hand but my Auntie Judy and those who backed up an idea of someone who could bring stories backed by a powerful history gave me believe in myself. Carving in and of itself is tedious and I thought of my mother beading and how long that process was. Also thinking of weaving and the process of gathering bark, treating it. Art is tedious but it tells a story in the end, it is a journey.

I recall one night when I was on the fence. I remember giving some Dine’ visitors tobacco and they saw a pack of Paul Mauls that one of my friends left on the break table, well, they assumed it was mine and they brought me a carton of them and lucky strikes so I was told I had to smoke them in respect so I started smoking then out of ‘obligation’? however it worked out I lived on coffee and cigarettes and music.

One night I was contemplating giving up as the sun was going down and the stereo in the shop started playing a recording from my great great grandfather switching modes from cd and tape deck. I saw a red tail hawk perched up looking down at me as I sat down to smoke and just watched it looking at me wondering if it would fly away but it watched me and I smoked another and I lost the staring match.

I was carving in a old barn then and two butterflies flew in and I heard howling in the distance.

I put on a song to dig in from my friend Bruce (the Batman) for a boost on top of what was already given to me. I can’t say why but it made me think of my Auntie Chickie the butterflies that stayed on the coffee table as I was carving. It was another staring match of sorts and I looked back now and then as if I was being witnessed if I was working or not feeling judgment.

I’m writing this today because I miss Chickie for being an iron butterfly. There are words in our language that don’t translate into the english language but music communicates it. I needed those things to show up as they did to make me who I am and even the dark times are just as important as the times when I dreamt about making a paper butterfly for my auntie then as a 9 year old as much as I needed the butterflies to show up when I was 19 carving that first story pole.

Push through to see your own light and you’ll get there.

My auntie, my mother and grandmother taught me to believe in love and perseverance.

I believe in that and it drives me to make that into art that is more than one dimension, it’s a connection like weaving together or pulling the beads together with sinew.

My Anti-hero Tsa-qwa-supp

Although I had met Tsa-qwa-supp one time his body of work has huge impact on all of us in this art practice. He was notorious for being a difficult person and I head many of them of how I shouldn’t talk to him. But I’m reminded of the misunderstood and how to me Art was a Sirus Black figure met with a touch of Han Solo and Captain Jack Sparrow.

Tsa-qwa-supp

I’ve been leaning on this idea of hindsight as 2020 in the literal sense because it’s easy to call out figures who were perceived villains and anti-heroes. Don’t get me wrong there is true injustice and corruption all around and I don’t have any issue with speaking to it.

Perhaps now more than ever it’s important to look at reform and for what Dave Chapelle said in his stand up years ago “an honest discourse with ourselves as a nation”. Tsa-qwa-supp was shaped by abuse of a boarding school system which few could relate to today. He shaped that as difficult as he was at times into work that would show a side of his culture and identity shared with the world that stemmed from it but transformed.

In this field of work like any other there are ups and downs and mentors and students alike. Working with Loren White he shared a few small prints that I admired from Art’s earlier works when he was truly coming into his own style of expression. It’s not easy for many to read unless you look at the body of work that an artist creates over years and even decades to arrive at.

That was one thing I was most grateful for to curate alongside Bill Holm and Susan Point for the Burke Museums Exhibit. Looking in the collection of how these heroes of mine started out like anyone else with some lesser refined work but work nonetheless.

I recalled in documentaries Isabell Rorick talking about the pains of learning to weave and watch her teacher take the weaving back and reduce it by half with few words if any. At the same time it was the value of knowing there was a standard that was needed. I feel that is something needed. Necessary to be good at what you are committed to. It takes great sacrifice to learn the skills and what it will take. Some could say that was overcompensation for our people deemed as savage and or primitive. The contrary being how well skills where developed on a relationship with the land and the value of making items to the best of your ability.

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Art said what he had to so without holding anything back. He was a lion and in a lot of ways I wished I had been able to work with him despite the stories. It is all a matter of who is willing to trade the time to a challenge and survive. I’m not advocating violence in a workplace by any means but at the same time it exists and in many cases not to make the student better.

I was told a story about Art cussing someone out asking about how to paint and he just shrugged them off and said to figure it out. It became somewhat of a legend and the longer I thought about that it was like asking a guitar player on tour how to tune their guitar.

I’ve looked at writing this off and on for a long time and one thing came to mind of my older keynote talks going over them where I featured one of his masks that I always admired. It is called “Money Maker”.

Money Maker, Tsa-qwa-supp cedar, paint feathers.

The mask has the dollar symbol stylize and a not to the green of money. Two levels of this being the high value of our old masks that aged copper and iron to create the bright green/blue color. I always theorized that it was an expression of the time in which we live. Our old masks from this region were about ceremony honoring hunters, fisherman, whalers and nature with story. Today we are just making currency move along.

The irony here is this mask was stolen because I wanted to find a way to include it in an exhibition.

What I wanted to say. I mentioned that I met him once during the Victoria BC Canoe journey. He had a drum he had just painted and he looked fairly approachable. I was nervous given all the stories about him but I went up to talk and note who I studied with and that I was a fan of his work. That I had just bought one of his prints for my cousin.

He was smiling a lot and I was a little taken back about the monster he was made into. He was proud of the drum he just painted and we talked a bit about painting. At a pause his grandson probably ten at the time pulled at his shirt and said “grandpa, what kinda paint do you use” snickering and in a loud childish whisper. He said looking at me “this isn’t one of those guys” and put his hand on my shoulder. I asked if I could take his picture and he agreed and said he should sit down to look stoic. But his grandson came back to photo bomb the pics and he couldn’t help himself and said to just shoot the photo but he wasn’t showing he was angry.

Tsa-qwa-supp at Victoria, BC photo by Qwalsius - Shaun Peterson

It wasn’t long after I learned he was diagnosed with cancer. He passed in 2003. A few years later when I went thru a hard time I was gifted the print of that drum design and one called Baah-booq. And not long after my relative I gave that print to sent a photo of the Wolf Pole that is one of my favorite public works. The story of wolf dances coming to the people.

The First Wolf Dancer Pole

Connections before a web

Like many people or at least in my tech group of friends it’s well known Joe Rogan has a podcast that took years to build up. There are many instances and take aways but one bothered me is the negative takes on Native Americans that he only recently had a guest on noting the Native perspective as modern day people.

In 2006 I took I agreed to do a residency in Taiwan which was in and still is under political interference but aren’t we all these days ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I had no idea what to expect of the trip because all I had known about the country was them as manufacturing. I went and ahead of my Alaska Native peers as artists.

When I arrived I was greeted happily by the curator and two Indigenous translators. What struck me and what worried me to begin with on travel is not knowing what to anticipate in way of need for tools and availabilty to make substantial work. I packed my essential tools that were a bit of controversy in themselves being ‘foreign’.

I wanted to bring along some items for gifting to my hosts but was warned in advance that It wasn’t allowed but it made me aware of of safety yet I wanted to share something in honor of true traditional cultural exchange.

Regardless I was fascinated to be somewhere to share culture and when I opened my camera lens to photograph the Viper sculpture the humidity was so dense it fogged the lens before I could get my eye agains the viewfinder. I discovered very quickly the climate difference and worried for my friends from Hanes and Angoon who were on their way. Shgen George and Clarissa Rizal became my sister and my auntie in the experience.

What struck me is arriving ahead of them and greeted with great disappointment on the faces of the tribal people when I was so excited to be there to share in cultural exchange. One of the men in the group was speaking angrily as I was taking my bags out of the small car at the curator and I was nervous. I asked the translators what was going on. One of them turned away and the other whispered “you are not like who he wanted you to be”. That was her limited translation and I thought to myself “what did I get myself into here”?

Thinking of mail order brides and people for show the way our people were once travelled as exotic and different and I felt like well here it is “I”m not different enough”.

The translators tried to calm things down and thankfully didn’t give up on me. I felt a panic and I notice a log nearby and asked if I could look at it and it was from one of the carvers there that brought it in and asked if I could show them my tools and work with them.

At the same time I pulled out my ipod to share photos with them of my family because of limited translation.

Opening of Raven, Viper and the Ocean

Henry Allen hand painted photo by Faye Bosshart

and I shared others that I was a bit embarrassed to show of my early work as they scrolled through my library but realize how limited the tech was at that time and how they perceived me yet at the same time feeling I wanted indigenous culture to thrive.

this image of George David and Greg Colfax carving together gave me some protection to be legit with them.

I managed to cram one small cedar block, three adzes and five crooked knives, a center line rule and a pouch of a nylon bag zipper for pencils. Most importantly was one small shipwright adze and a yew wood wedge.

It was 90 degrees out that day with what felt like a 100 percent humidity but I loved every minute of proving myself to a group of people I had no idea about on another side of the globe.

Kaoshsiung reminded me of what my dad talked about Los Angles being like as a Native during the Indian relocation act. Stressed of Native people out of place.

Shgen and Clarrissa arrived and I felt like I had been a good dog looking out for them in their arrival. I want to make a point here in writing in that when people write about dogs they say ‘begging like a dog’ or ‘sweating like a dog’ the negative connotations. In our culture dog and wolf are from the same stem of a branch.

I felt there was a reason I went there and understood or at least thought I did at the time but it was not a clear arrangement really. I had reluctance with the people I met at first just as they did with me but all the same it was about interpretation. When they saw I was skilled they took me in to see my value. I was no Winnetou but I was something of value nonetheless.

As artists we always have to hit the ground running for anything for public work because there is safety in mind of the public and how well engineering is going to meet with it and that is all above a level of translation barriers.

I never felt like more of a rock star being hosted by people from another land and we went to a festival with people in a venue much like Seattle Center but even larger. There were many bright feathered dancers and applause. I looked to the Indigenous translators at my side to see them shaking their heads in dismay.

I wanted to know but it wasn’t until three weeks in that I found out what the disappointment was about not being able to really speak with them about their dismay.

Two of the translators were from tribes at odds, Paiwan and Amis

They were in large disagreement about the leadership of their country and all that was in place. I felt treasured and at the same time feeling the dilemma of holding this inside this knowledge.

We all travelled on a small bus in a storm that is normal for them but different for us from the states. They have ‘normal’ storms that wash away their hillside roads and we were going to visit the Tao people on the other side of the mountain side. A woman joined who was Han Chinese who had a husband from Tacoma of all places with sources to help us because the curator was very inept.

on the way we met a man who was regarded as a bridge of people. He inspired me greatly. He held on to the old ways and at the same time embraced transition. What I admired in him was his ability to share the commonality in good. He was a poor artist who saw the humanity in the strife of the tribes and told me a story and reminded me of Beau Dick and Douglas David in many ways. For my lack of being able to translate his name was phonetically ‘se-kiul-yü’.

I should note weeks before going there I was nervous on what to anticipate because I hadn’t travelled before and a print group I worked with in Tacoma said his brother was a translator briefly and said to watch out for the large spiders.

He warned me about a blue spider the size of a human hand. And here I was speaking in this mans studio feeling like I captivated the people with my words in translation. The only one I was speaking to was Sekuliu and the Han Chinese tranlator along with Shgen and Clarrissa in hindsight. The Paiwan translator shared with me leaving the room I’m glad you survived because near the end that spider was noticed only by a few people and that’s why I motioned the “get off stage” wave at the neck because she spent time in England and I was really just boring everyone.

At the same time that I was floored that people wouldn’t look out for me it was also about who was paying attention and I can say for my counterparts I would never think of Shgen as someone who wouldn’t have noticed that because she was further back.

The next day we met the Tao people and the the Chinese translator and her husband who helped us along left us but they were invaluable. I lugged this case with my tools to show people what I had learned from our side of the world afterall. We set up and when I opened the case and showed them this small cedar block to demonstrate what I was taught they told me to put it away right away.

The translators told us we were family and we would see what real culture was NOT a show.

That night the people hosted us and in my best equivalent I would say it was like Neah Bay. The people hosted us who judged us once before but they planned for us and danced with us and sang.

At that time I only knew three songs but I did know Northern songs and Clarissa told me I need to dance for them because I knew how to represent.

I was blessed with the meaning of their dagger dance that was once danced with swords and knives. Under higher rule they were made to replace them with umbrellas.

It reminded me of one of the familiy interviews that Tsa-qwa-supp was moved by about the Kwakwaka’wakw. I don’t knot the name but it was along the lines of “the Queen said we were a colorful people and they surpassed us for generations and then we are supposed to dance for entertainment”?

The people when asked to dance with daggers again refused and made a show in rebellion with peace. The did this many times over the years and I’ve been cut off from many of them with social media for what I’ve been trying to communicate.

Auntie Clarissa was so moved by them she wanted songs to be shared from us and said “you know how to dance, look at them wave the paddle like we do leaning back I know you’ve seen that”!

And so I did reluctant but knowing I was a placeholder and sometime we have to improvise.

The days following we were left to fend for ourselves because the curator who hosted had been over extended for his entertainment. The hotel we went back to came from a call from him saying his wife was having a baby and we were on our own to get back to find our way home.

In panic what were we to do? It was the people who came together and they travelled out give money and pay for our flight and see us to the airport when we were used as the way some of our people were used as objects of ‘exotic’.

what I take away from it though in a message that received from one of the family is that spider over my head they saw as a protector. In their culture they see the nuisance as a worker like an ant that we look down on in this side of the globe.

I’ll never forget this when one of the tribal people there said to me

“I see you sia your sister and you mother because you feel the earth so send this message back we are still here like you goon cheese”

— unknown

Any Salish speaker would say that is wrong in place of words or Tlingit but it’s the spirit in which it’s intended that speaks like lightening touching the water, not thunder in the clouds.

All this came from a song that had nothing to do with either of our cultures but a connection, a reflection across the water from one of my brothers long forgotten the moved me to write when I was feeling like I was alone. He read my posts about Bane and heroes and villains and translates English for the people there now. An important aspect to this is when they made myth about the people their under many oppressors they owned their perception of it. When I say that I was moved he reminded me after years of learning myth.

There was a tale about a great man who ventured the land spreading great teaching to the people like a Jesus figure. The people were said to demonize him and in that place suppressed but when they saw what happened and realized this they embraced these skullls that were made to make everyone fear them generations ago and make them with pride and not sell them.

The owned that image and the Viper became a great symbol of pride eventually.

By writing this I know I’m on a radar that was already thin but nonetheless I’ve said what i have to say from my travels and share that there are links and the politics are not tribal as one would say in a Western sense.

He reminded me of Sakuliu

of painting about the early logs on a fire outside their houses to gather to watch television

and this song captivated this so well and speaks volumes. If a picture is worth a thousand words a song that stays with you will last forever and in that is true value like lightening touching water.

Changing the Narrative

Numbers and code. Something I always felt I struggles with because I was never good at math in all my years of schooling. It wasn’t until I was failing art that I leaned on and grasped the power of geometry and algebra with a teacher most of my peers saw as a difficult teacher.

Something about the idea of formulas and writing letters and high raised squares intrigued me. I learned the DOS program language when I was in 4th grade in a summer program that my grandmother signed me up for and the teacher of it gave me a coloring book about Northwest Coast Native art.

Her name, Jene Navarro. The book was mostly Alaska Native art as that was predominant for years and defined the Seattle and Tacoma region in the Pacific Northwest.

Years later I would find myself in the field of doing this as a profession but along the way I was always following technology and computers. My first of podcasts was Ken Ray and then Nosillacast and then the network that Leo Leporte built up of TWIT. In there I met heroes of a different field that people would assume that by my being Native American I wouldn’t glom onto. Whatever the reason it was meant to be that I was moved by these people and their devotion to tech and following it. They got me through dark times as a community of tech geeks.

I identified very much with Allison’s frustration of the common phrase “so easy your mother could do it” relating to understanding computers. Something about that stood out to me because I thought of that with the Geico ads of “so easy a caveman can do it”. My tie in is the perception that one size fits all. Judging a book by the cover. I realize I have a different life than most Natives but regardless I’ve tried to make the most of technology and math understanding worlds that are usually at odds.

As a Native I’m often told that “you’re not doing that right” or “that’s not the way your ancestors did this from what I read in books from school” and my all time favorite “your ancestors didn’t have steel”.

I think of the skit Dave Chappelle did about what he calls the three daves at different times in his life and his reactions in each. Not to give away his bit but I can say my interpretation.

When I was called out when I started out for using steel as tech I was diplomatic and apologetic. Years later I responded with a question “would you tell someone from Japan they have to dress in Kimono and be who you read about in books”? As the current state of things I share a response of why I regard my work as traditional innovation with this.

“Tradition has innovation built into itself to be adaptable. No different than a rising tide. Our ancestors lived with abundant resource and now we have to make the most of what we have, are you doing that for yourself”?”

I felt vindication when I watched the documentary Press, Play Pause when artist Bill Drummond talked about technology in music.

““(the) artist comes after the technology. The artist didn’t invent oil paint, the artist didn’t invent the moving camera (points at camera filming interview)… in that sense technology is great”.
”

I’ve studies tool making under my mentors and methods standing on the shoulders of giants. I didn’t write the code or invent the shapes but I’ve taken the time to put them together to tell a story in some way I can make sense of. I don’t get it right out of the gate by any means but in my profession I treasure the old growth cedars that we make into art. The fur, feathers, shells all come together to move us to make song and dance a reality.

The combination of materials I use that are perceived as unconventional stem from a value of our traditions. Our values drive the traditions from the time we live in now only if we pay attention to them.

It wasn’t long ago that it was a common phrase “the only good Indian is a dead one”. It always puzzled me that with abundant resource we can’t find a way to exist with all there is.

The way I feel about things as of the current state is we are in a hard reboot that was needed.

I can say that I’m just as moved by the hard work of my ancestors as much as I am moved by the work of Allison Sheridan and Brianna Wu as much as I can love and be moved by Gregg Deal and Ryan Redcorn.

I may not have invented the steel I carve with or the code I write to make UV maps for my renders. It takes many arms reached out to tell a story and remix these things into something bigger than ourselves. I just want to take time to acknowledge the pieces atop my family that is a community that is global and far reaching because Chielf Seal although it be debatable said ‘all things are connected’ and it’s no coincidence that tech is based in the Pacific Northwest.

Today I use CAD as much as I can with Rhino, C4D, and sketchup to make the most of dwindling resources all the while working with engineers and architects to preserve story and the promise of a story where we aren’t just written into history as a side note but one that can see us people living alongside in the modern day protecting values of limited resources. Using the tools we have at the time we live in to be better.

Thunderbird sealed

Years ago when I started to learn about the nuances of Coast Salish art from my elders many who have passed, Thunderbird was important to them and our history. The common view people adhere to is of a large bird with curled horn like ears that is from the Kwakwaka’wakw people. I used to draw them in that way and was corrected by my auntie Judy Wright. She told me the Thunderbird was a small bird no bigger than a hawk with a white body. It would stand atop drift logs or trees without tops near the beach and call out the lightning and thunder.

I was moved to be able to work on coating this standing up due to installation circumstances with my cousin Anthony Duenas who painted the mural that represents our slahal (bone games) depiction.

I was moved very much by the words at our opening of the casino by our leaders who all noted the work of our ancestry. I was asked about why the thunderbird is standing on a pole that is “uncarved” by an observer. I had to point out that the focus of the sculpture was always to be a single figure and that the adze marks of the column are the representation of all the people who got us here. I thought about what that means when I hear that sound of the adze hitting the cedar in a large space just like the drums in it’s final place standing up. I felt thunder in my bones and the warmth of my relatives standing beside me as we sang and shared words in our language that was once silenced. It is here and it may be different but all things change but like the cedar tree they have roots and remind us of how we are all connected.

The day we brought the pole out to the site in the morning it was stormy and lightning was all around. I thought of the elders who shared with me when I was a young boy not to be afraid. Gloria Bean taught me that in the storm the ancestors of the sky world are touching the land and lighting fire where it needs to be. The rain is feeding the trees and our medicine plants that need it.

Installing this piece is a major milestone in my life for many reasons and I, like the words shared at the opening agree that we are standing on the shoulders of giants. I negates the western idea of ‘low man on the totem pole”. In this case there is just cedar a column that is somewhat ambiguous but nonetheless a perch for a small bird to watch over the people.

For what it's worth

The times they are a changing or are they?

I was running in the morning with my dog when lightning was touching with the rain. Growing up here I learned to appreciate it more than complain about it. An elder once told me when the storm is on it’s reminder the ancestors are speaking to us connecting the sky world to the land and the water.

That was part of inspiration to design these panels for downtown Seattle

photo by Ashley Genevieve

My understanding of placing Devilfish at the corner of the street was an idea that we are all moving in many directions but all the while connected by the water. It resonates with Sealths speech of the web and how we are connected. After all in this region technology and connecting us is a big deal here in Seattle.

photo by Ashley Genevieve

these went up on my birthday and I was happy to bring something of story to Seattle with good intent of iconography. The whale on the far left corner is a tribute to our Makah relations that despite large opposition were informed by whales for nourishment. The moon governs the tides. The Mountain feeds the fiver and gives the salmon a journey that comes back to us. The islands and the trees give us shelter and the whales remind us we must understand the importance of family.

As the night went on a different story unfolded and I watched the city on fire and this image always stuck with me. It made me think of Sealth and our chiefs who endured a pandemic without technology. At the same time I was moved to know so many reached out to protect the art I put up that was only planned as temporary to begin with. I’ve always understood that my art is not about permanence but a bridge like the sceleč and the sparrows. The storm happens for a reason to remind us we are all connected and that we don’t all move in the same direction at a time but that is equally important.

Some things are timeless though and for what it’s worth is one of those works of art that remind me after a storm the sun will come out and the sparrows will sing even if it’s still overcast or raining. The water that left the ocean and went into a cloud is coming back to you to feed the trees and give you shelter, and feed out all the same.

2020

A gentleman holds the door open. Takes chances and knows sometimes he’ll be surrounded and alone like the Great Gatsby. Pain sometimes leads us to greater things and know like a comedian who bombs the show goes on. I know great music comes from the unrequited love experience and it’s very universal. This work came from many other tracks but I can say that music helps me pick myself up and and when I can’t find it in me I find the value in playing music as place to transfer that energy with hopes it will find it’s way to where it needs to go.

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filters:

A picture is worth a thousand words.

There are two sides to every story

Two statements that come to mind while thinking about the experience of quarantine. Although admittedly as an artist a lot of our time is spent in the studios or garage or home office space creating. The shock to my system was knowing that what I had taken for granted were the little things of venturing out to the store and general interactions.

During this time I’ve been carving in a new space that has no windows and it’s been quite an experience. In times carving you can find yourself working away and what some call ‘the zone’ where you find a place where moving forward feels effortless and you are learning from persistence and feeling the work, you understand something and feel it all at once. Although, when you don’t have a window to tell you when the time changes it becomes a whole new world indeed.

A fellow creative shared the idea of how damaging it is that Native people are written largely in fiction, most recently along side the Twilight saga. Then I recall the writings of Karl May who wrote fiction that influenced generations to this day. A fictional Native character called Winnetou was a hero archetype fighting alongside Old Shatterhand. These writings spanned a very long period of time of which I have limited exposure to but overall what troubled me in my experience traveling in Europe to exhibit mainly in Prague and blind romanticism.

One evening over dinner in the country side at the table I was joking about the absurd flat aspect of this hero with a small group. I had learned that Karl May had claimed to people that he visited the US when he had in fact not. I noticed one of the men in the group growing increasingly upset and he finally broke to tell me I was insulting his hero of his childhood.

He explained to me that Winnetou was needed to provide a moral idea about connecting to the land and fight oppression. It intrigued me to hear his view but I had to come back to my point with it all. A fictional writer who never came here lead millions of people over time to think of us as one group. So wherever I travel and my friends who are Native that go arrive with expectations of being a hero archetype on horseback with long black hair. A role that has always been an actor wearing red paint to ‘play Indian’.

This brings me back to the Bane character who like many Natives endured great tragedy and suffering. I told him about the fishing rights movement to protect our treaties broken and the people who were under siege. That life was not entertainment. It is a bigger picture. I told him about our weavers who sold their basketry for pennies on the dollar to survive. How much work it takes to harvest material from the land and not take too much. At that time Christopher Nolan had written Bane into the third franchise of Batman. It gave us a reference point of discussion and I could reference Bane as an example. He was ex military and I noted his shemagh that he was wearing. He said it wasn’t something standard issue but one he had received in trade. He admired an abalone necklace I was wearing that was a combination of a shell my uncle had given me and beads hand rolled the old way by cousin.

It seemed appropriate to make the trade and I told him and the others at the table to be sure to tell the people they know that we aren’t as we are written in movies. I knew they would likely search online about the Coast Salish people and there wouldn’t be a lot on their at that time.

As we exchanged items and the guests seemed happy about the resolve I had to point out something that stood out to me. Knowing he was ex military and that he must be familiar with “false/stolen valor”. I informed them that where we come from what bothered me about people wearing headdresses at festivals we insulting for that very meaning of what it symbolizes. That in our region the items we own aren’t manufactured for a fashion statement but earned. Let them know my culture is not a costume. Think about the companies to make those items so you can play an idea of being wild. The wild west always implies a world without order when the people were connected not fictional but living by survival.

I went on to talk about our cedar capes and hats that they frowned at because they looked Asian in appearance. Yet I pointed out the purpose of them and harvesting cedar from what I know of it shedding rain from us and being so effective. And that in time of assimilation many of our people fell ill because they were forced to wear cotton that didn’t suit the region. Giving way to my best guess hypothermia. If we are on the water and one were to wear a cotton hoodie if would hold in the cold more than anything.

It also allowed me to tell them about the small pox time. The devastation of our people and losing 90% of our population. I noticed the group become uncomfortable about the subject after all we were at a dinner table but I figured it was necessary to share knowing I was only going to have a limited time to communicate a perspective that would otherwise be a missed opportunity. So I acknowledged that it wasn’t a pretty story but one they should be aware of. That fiction and romanticism can be dangerously deceptive vs intention.

I’m reflecting on this and it brought to mind the importance of having talks that aren’t easy. That using filters may make things appear pretty and appealing at times. It also reminds me that putting on a mask may not have saved our people from plague but we had the technology long ago then to know the clothing that suited our landscape and kept us safe. 

When the lock down came. I gave my son the shemagh that man gave me because we didn’t have any dust masks left in the shop. But I showed him how they are tied and how I learned about them. I had an older face mask with filters that felt overkill and my son said “Jesus dad you look like Bane, you’re gonna get us shot”! And it struck me how he was aware of the news and people buying guns and hoarding toilet paper. I was glad he was aware though of the reality we face not the same as some people 

After I told him this story about Prague and where the shemagh came from and the cedar we wear and why. He reminded me he’s gone up to harvest cedar with his aunties. We were ready to go out to the store at night leaving the studio. He unlocked his phone and as we got into the car he said in his best Bane imitation “nobody cared who I was until I put on a mask” and it made me laugh.

It gave me insight to a way to teach history in perspective and for us not to be written into fiction by sharing stories that aren’t easy to tell.

Far Beyond the Wheel

In all that is going on in the craziness of the ‘new normal’ I was overlooking the anniversary of one of my most important heroes that i have always been moved by over the years.

Chris Cornell was a singer some may know, some may not. To me he was so ahead of his time in his writing and some things get brushed over. By chance I got to meet Chris Cornell as a teenager thru a friend who knew the band Seaweed before grunge became a thing. Looking back at the timeline it was probably before Matt Cameron joined the band in place of Hiro Yamamoto.

Regardless it was a powerful memory of musicians just being people off stage talking music and being people.

Years later I was carving and establishing my career as an artist early on and working in Ballard with Bruce Cook III on a pole. Moe’s was a venue that I was just aware of and Presidents of the United States of America was big at the time. We were on a break from carving and walked by when he noted the sound thru the wall and said it sounded like them and said we should go back so later that night we did.

To a big surprise they hosted a closed show, PUSA under a different band name. At the time the grunge scene from Nirvana' broke and Seattle became a different place. But there I was in a show because Bruce said hey lets go check this out. What stands out to me looking back is that not only was I in a limited show and felt like VIP where they could have charged big money for labels. These musicians cared about their energy and love of making music. I was able to meet Kim Thayil and Ben Shepherd. I was enamored. These guys fueled my youth from me teens into a career choice. They were brought up to the stage because the had a song called Spoonman about a man who caught their attention in Seattle that nothing to his name. Something about that show and knowing he was there and not exploited moved me so much. It wasn’t about that and to the bands of Seattle that I grew up with always gave me pride in growing up here. Along with the release of the track that wasn’t wide release and a nod to Black Sabbath and my early respect in remixing ideas “Into the Void (Sealth)”

Years later I saw the show before the band broke up at Key Arena and I could tell it was being forced. I had a mix of my friends around me and we looked to one another and could see it wasn’t right.

I was always skeptical of talks about Cornell joining Rage Against the Machine but then again I was skeptical about a director Christopher Nolan making a new Batman movie.

He broke out of a shell for a time touring and I’m not going to dive into his career so much as the reason I felt compelled to write this in the first place.

I got to meet a person who changed ideas who grew up in Seattle and saw the world. Go through many ups and downs and that is what life is. Regardless I come back to a song that made me think as a teen, the power of writing and thinking that never left me and has only now been awakened in his absence.

HANDS ALL OVER

Don't touch me
Hands all over the eastern border
You know what I think we're falling
From composure
Hands all over western culture
Ruffling feathers and turning eagles into vultures
Into vultures

Got my arms around baby brother
Put your hands away
Your gonna kill your mother, gonna kill your mother
Kill your mother
And I love her, yeah
I love her

Hands all over the coastal waters
The crew men thank her
Then lay down their oily blanket
Hands all over the inland forest
In a striking motion trees fall down like dying soldiers
Yeah like dying soldiers

Got my arms around baby brother
Put your hands away
Your gonna kill your mother, gonna kill your mother
Kill your mother
And I love her, yeah
I love her
I love her

Hands all over the peasants daughter
She's our bride she'll never make it out alive
Hands all over words I utter
Change them into things you want to
Like balls of clay
Put your hands away

Yeah, put your hands away
Put your hands away
Gonna kill your mother
Gonna kill your mother
Gonna kill your mother
And I love her
I love her
I love her
I love her
And she loves me, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

he didn’t live to see it but he inspired the remix of those ideas into making these four paddles that represent Sealth, Leschi, Chief Joseph and Patkanim. I called it my four fathers and if not for him I wouldn’t have had the courage to make it and write about them for people to learn about.

My Four Fathers

I circle back to meeting him when I knew very little about the art traditions of our people. He said he didn’t like the album art they did because it wasn’t a reflection of the people from here. It was an idea that never left me and one that made me look deeper into music and art and history.

photo courtesy Brendan O’Brien

Stories to be told: Black Dog

Stories that move you aren’t written with the ending understood before hand but you walk into them not knowing what the journey is going to be. It will take time and it pulls you in or even like a movie you overlooked them in some way.

Today we think of stories in a more human sense but in recent projects I took time out to revisit other creators that were able to convey simple ideas that in turn made me revisit so much of what I thought I knew. Daniel Koren about a park bench video and following the value of Indy comedy shorts.

It inspired me to revisit the print that I had made for the Chehalis tribe in form of a carving. A Story call Coyote brothers and the Grandson of Dog.

The Story is long and intriguing. It was a treasure to sit with the elders panel for that year and learn about the push and pul of perceived power of a ring. What drew me in what, why dog. Nobody talks about dogs. It’s always wolf or eagle. They aren’t noble characters in most points of view. The I remembered the first story pole I carved with a team of artists where the coyote was an idea elders were asking for and ultimately let go.

These are characters without a voice much the way Native perspective is misunderstood or frowned upon.

At both times of those crossroads I walked away knowing there is something to all this. After all why are dogs so close to us in our homes all over the world. Our companions and comforts, riding in the car, walking or running, getting us out to walk them is a need they have and even on planes, but let’s not go there.

In this hard time I am happy to know that so many shelters have taken dogs in. At the same time knowing much support is going to our reservations.

I like to think that we don’t overlook stories but there is power in looking at motivations to move them forward. There is an idea that is accepted as tradition over stories. Stories happen around us all the time. It’s the observation of them that drive us to make art in the first place.

Overlooking the City study from Ari Sigglin’s self portraits

This print show I worked on in collaboration with Andrea Grant came about in need to tell stories from a view that is from what those things are from a modern Native perspective. In that it took many people that have shaped my life ups and downs. In those relationships we all have in common being dog owners. Some more than others. Regardless this was a need for me to get out of my comfort zone and write when I’m too tired to carve but need to get something out. Walking the dog as it were.

We’re bombarded by news about bad things and I wrap myself in that like a blanket sometimes and it is suffocating. It’s made me think about the bird songs in the morning walk, the raccoons that venture out in the day, the coyotes that went onto the streets in Los Angeles.

Circling back I think of that journey the dogs we love in our homes had to break from the pack and endure a hard transition. One of trust that the two feet we stand on would rely on the love of four legs and in some cases, three. These images were inspired by a remix of many things. Jimmy Page playing his guitar at the Kingdome, Marlon Brando’s interview on a talk show where he was mocked for concerns over Native rights. Sirius Black, Jeff Buckley , Bret Weinstein, Rocket Raccoon and Tom Waits.

You might notice the list is all male but I believe this necessary because a man can’t speak on the behalf of women. It’s not my place. It is not to say I’m not moved by the story lines that are written. It’s not my story to tell really. We make lemonade from lemons as artists. As a man, I’m told we are dogs or at least that’s what I hear with a general broad stroke of nuances.

The story of Black dog is losing many battles and be willing to walk into the fire literally. To come from a wolf line, run with coyotes but in the end approach a fire on the river made by humans. Seeking warmth when all that was at the back was a cold moonlight and howling wind at the back.

During all this i was inspired to paint again with true muse. Not for anything other than to learn from the journey of painting things that are more complex than I’ll ever understand and it’s not my place to even pretend. I can walk to the fire like a black dog and sit by a fire and listen even if I don’t understand.

I think about that video often from above and how comedy and tragedy intertwine. We could complain all day or we could laugh all day but I find myself in between trying to find the bridge, be a dog at odds with leaving my natural instinct behind searching for a new story. Today we lose ourselves in fantasy and movies relating to characters and scripts written to draw us in. Not question the story that is our life. The time is now and we have it for a brief moment. We are all animals after-all.

I recall my friend yelling at his dog so harshly for something of a small incident. I felt compelled to remind him “a dogs life isn’t a long one. are you going to lose yourself over something so small with a love so big? Like scolding a child for something all the same if you knew they wouldn’t live past your lifetime”? I was shrugged off but later on it came back to me and he gave me this inspiration I put into words.

When I was a child I remember when our dog bit my brother when was too young to know not to tease him over food. He was a stray from the river and knew a different life. Now that I’m older looking back I see something I didn’t understand. It took years to pass but that dog looked out for us until his dying days and it took time, patience and love. Protected us from predators on the riverbank remembering his wolf ancestry for us.

Perhaps the most biographical piece I’ve painted is just a remix of these ideas but I’d like to think of that video putting words into my dog from the river as this…

I walked a long way to get here to arrive at this place. A dog that evolved to love you even if the coyotes took my arm. I still believe in love and I’ll sit by the fire with you if you light a fire and sit under the moon next to you with my head in your lap. I’ll listen even if I don’t understand what you’re saying. If you see me as a dog I’ll love you forever.

Thunderbird

There’s no doubt lock down has changed the way we think about a lot of things. Carving has been a long tedious road where you think a lot but you also have things like podcasts and music. I don’t trust people who don’t like music but that’s just me.

Anyway here is video from the Thunderbird that took many years to develop the experience and stemmed from amazing elders who took the time to share the importance of it and why it should be carved as it is. Unpainted and standing atop a beam adzed.

In all there were and still a lot of things going in parallel with this work. The story poles installed and soon a video I will share of this going up as well. I also realize that a picture is worth a thousand words and documenting the work behind carving allows people to see the work that goes into standing these figures up to stand for a long time.

It’s been 11yrs now that I started to work in Cinema4d to make these plans a reality. A complication of things on paper is the disconnect with a sense of place or surrounding. It makes a huge difference to know what the surrounding of the sculpture is going to be and how it fits just right.

All the while it’s important to know how ti improvise with the material because wood has flaws and knots that can’t be read from the outside but even so. Woodwork overall is about utilizing and making sense of what you have to make sculpture feel right in it’s place.

Thunderbird itself is a powerful figure and unlike other tribes in our stories was a small white bird that the power to call on lightening.

Looking forward to sharing the next video in a post looking back #hindsightis2020

From the Ground up

It is rare but called for to share insight to inspiration as it happens.

it happens though and it is an idea that has to get out. Looking back on totem poles and story poles. They are treasures of things you might not have understood at the time but come back to. I was reluctant to be an artist because it was looked down upon. Years in embracing that it’s my calling in moving into sculpture from the first time picking up a pencil meeting paper it’s something that came naturally.

I’m reminded of a conversation with my fellow artist friend Andy Everson who inspired me to keep pursuing digital art as a valid medium. “why don’t they question call us out for using pencils and paper”? In doing public works for years engaging with people who want to have curiosity into Native American work. There is a loaded word of ‘authenticity’. It is a perception that this was made by a real Indian.

As a sculptor in this region I also find the phrase that is overused “low man on the totem pole”. It serves to convey that you are not important. David Boxley Sr. talks of this and it resonated with me. It brought me back to my first mentor I learned to carve with Steve Brown who was called out for being non-Native working with Nathan Jackson. There is reverence for many sculptural styles and what they mean but there is a powerful message to working on this Thunderbird I’m nearing completion of that took years to understand.

If you imagine the pole as beings stacked literally on top of one another the strongest figure is the one holding the weight of them all.

On another level of that thinking of where that log came from and how long it took to grow.

Any cedar we carve today is at least 300 years old to be able to endure the weather and the storms over generations of human lives. How many birds nested in that tree and how many squirrels and raccoons climbed up and down in the battle of nature to survive? How many people hid behind them for fear of their lives and lost their lives to feed that tree?

Cedar here is a medicine to our culture that has roots that hold to the land. in the quarantine I think about how blessed I am to be able to work on these ancestors and tell a story with them and learn from them.

The time is on us to look at that because that salmon are disappearing along with the trees. Losing connection and being the bridge between our generations shifts our focus from looking up vs what is right in front of us.

I takes a village to raise a child. Fed by the experience of uncomfortable times that we grow from.

The hardest thing as a carver is working thru the knots. But when I think of them as branches that held strong for the birds I watch fly in the sky. Or shelter a raccoon or squirrel. Of if it was there for me to climb on as a child to see how high I could climb and get in trouble for. They are part of so much more than I’ll ever know and it keeps me working and thinking about how amazing it is to reach out and even write like this in hopes I could be that branch.

I go back to old lectures I gave as an artist when I was looking at what I thought I knew. As the saying goes if I only knew then what I know now. There is something about growing pains and this may even be one of them but I’m still growing and learning how much we are all connected with roots that go deeper than we know.

I’m reflecting on the Songs of the sky world pole and how it brought the people together. I hope in this time people can come back together with an appreciation for what they’ve overlooked and what I just thought of as a normal in my life. Our families gathered often and in contrast I had a lot of friends who didn’t know their relations at all. It was a stark reality to me that by being around them I needed to learn more and experience what it is to make something all the while value the medium I work in would be equally important.

Carved by Adam McIsaac, designed by Qwalsius - Shaun Peterson

Nothing of this scale happens alone but it’s from roots we are connected to with the people who understand what it is to devote their life to a skill.

An eagle flies in the sky the was born in a nest that grew from a tree

My Brother in the League of Shadows

Years before I was thinking artist was possible as a career it wasn’t one I wanted. I grew up where scholars and media made jokes about being an artist and they were never good. Back then it was to push at the idea of the other, the non conforming. I remember how upset and in trouble I was in a school that was largely a reflection of the larger population. Despite growing up on the home lands of my ancestry I was the 1% along with a few outliers.

Most of us in trouble were of color and in one instance I remember one thing now that came back to me during this time carving away in the studio. There was a lesson about carving a canoe out of soap and they stressed that the knife should never go back towards you. I know now as an adult and father the safety but all the pictures I had known of were of my great great grandfather and great carvers with the knife going back towards the body. It was also something I admired watching my grandmother, mom and aunties cutting potatoes cutting back but with great control.

I remember sitting in the principal office for pointing these things out and my Grandpa showing up largely under stress as he was on our tribal council at the time. I remember a confrontation sitting at that desk and having respect for my grandpa explaining to the the principle that there is value in what our culture has. His mother was a carver. She made mostly small items based on books she had and what she remembered despite boarding schools. At that time much like the Japanese internment camps, culture was suppressed. Natives at the time were just looking to reconnect.

It was around that time that my grandpa used to take me to a small mall called B&I that was somewhat famous for housing a Gorilla, Ivan. We went there often and I remember feeling so bad for animals in cages. I remember my grandfather and I spending a lot of time going there and how he was upset with the people there about captivation. Because he was a son of painter he was so upset somehow inside about locking up animals to make art.

Across from Ivan’s cage we would go to the comic store and when I saw my first impression of Batman iconography I remember Batman: The Cult . I remember my dad being so upset why would your grandpa let you buy a book about a cult. I said dad this is a story about overcoming that.

Looking back on that series even though I loved and was alway and admire of Bernie Wrightson. It made me dig into those things of amazing illustrators and their work.

When I got a job at Chief Leschi School to carve I met a friend who would change my life forever. Bruce Cook III was carving and caught the attention of Phil Zantua. At that time Phil taught art and was drumming and singing at Chief Leschi. I was a failing student at Green River Community college but captivated by line drawing. At the time I totem poles and formline were part of our culture. Bruce was hard on me but gave me true friendship and he brought me to Steve Brown who mentored us both in making tools and carving skills when he was working for Seattle Art Museum at the time as curator of Northwest Coast Native art.

All the while I went back to this book because Bruce took on the name as Batman, his dark period as it is called in the art world. I was inspired by him to keep going forward because he pushed forward that totem poles are NOT part of the land there and the people needed to recognize their own culture. Which lead to a transfer of elders that shared their knowledge to bring back story poles. Story poles were brought up in an idea in the days when our culture was outlawed yet and literally stand up against consuming culture. During the Alaska Yukon Pacific expo there was a need for Salish people to identify and have visibility.

At that time people pushed opposition of the Haida we once had great conflict with but there were under the same pressures for survival. I used to say that totems were just icons or crests and I learned how they have stories. I got caught up in a fight to preserve our culture but overlooked the importance of my brother who lit a fire for me to seek this out.

I inherited the nickname of Ironman and I am conflicted with it. I know my friend Bruce carries the name Batman. But like naming someone it stays with you and I always thought if I could name myself in the comic genre we have in this small section I love Bane as much as I love Rocket Raccoon.

On one hand I love Bane for his tactics but I love Rocket for his ability to escape any prison but also not like knowing he was made by someone. We are all culmination of ideas and the sum is greater than the parts.

Driving back from a potlatch where my car got broke into the following day when I was broke and had nothing. My friend was so upset but I shrugged it off and when he said “Raccoons” I pushed back to say hey that is of value. I don’t know why I pushed back like that but I loved that word and that they work in the night surviving.

Working away in the night over years teaches you what is important about meditation. And to me it’s been a gift. I think of Batman and his dark run and like the great movies that Nolan has made. The Batman has to come back

I see all that is going on now and have a huge respect for Bane that has never left me. Working in darkness and the people looked down on. I learned the most of what I know from people who worked tireless in the night. To be a hero you have to understand you are a villain in someones eyes like the Raccoon or Coyotes.

Bruce stood up against ideas against personal gains to make me his brother. I want people to know that by having these hard conversations and not being comfortable big things happen. Outbreak and chaos. I think of that world where opposition at large fights for a greater protection of the whole.

And why I love the Bane character because I always identified with villains more than being a hero. I feel like I learned from being a league of the shadows. Bane was the only character who broke Batman in the movies as a storyline but he was also one who came to be his brother in the comics. Not the gorilla in a cage but a brother in arms fighting for a greater good and in the movie plot I that I do approve of is the need to look out for our young ones and how you should look out for them. I love the contrast of Bane saying ‘no one knew who I was until I put on a mask’ in contrast to the end where he it shown looking up without one in his youth. There is great power in that and a story that echos something I always have seen here.

Overall I think of the league of shadows as a symbol of work without motivation of money because you can’t eat money. It is one of experience and hardship that you fight thru and come away from it enlightened. That is my honest side of being more often than not misunderstood but explained in my own words and why I make dark work sometimes. In all I give thanks to my brother who had the courage to stand up against things that didn’t seem right when I was uninformed and misguided by pure aesthetic vs meaning.

Lost at See

Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. I’m asked often where ideas come from and there is no answer EVER. Like any creative person I have to have experience to draw from and for many of us in this field an old idea pushed back to you like the tide when you might feel lost as sea.

A perfect case in point is the Salish Sea. This idea stemmed from spending time at the beaches admiring the moon and the water. At the same time I wondered why I was there at night drawn to it always as a relief in times of hardship. My brother and cousins used to work night shifts and all of my friends did when we were starting out and a lot of them were cooks. They would come to my studio I would have music on and I learned cooking techniques while they had a place to learn about art. I found myself connected to people who worked in the night and connected with an amazing mentor who was and to this day still a nigh owl. I always loved raccoons despite their nature and persona but knew they were a part of a bigger system. People envy wolves and bears but the seagull and the seals were put here for a reason. Checks and balances. The tide pushes back the world works in ebbs and flows.

In this time of isolation a lot of artists talk and I was reminded by a close friend how far we’ve come as Salish people pushed out and disregarded like rats or raccoons. I feel like the tide pushes along with the moon as a reflection of how powerful a current can be. If you’ve never been in a canoe or boat it’s hard to understand but those who have been in the water know how vulnerable we are in the water but how much we depend on it.

I’m a simple man at the end of the day I work at making images but those images should mean something. I was never in this to waste paper and resources. I’ve always felt that our resources are limited and that what was and is this land a great place. Life is to be treasured. We are all just animals looking to survive.

The earth has pushed back the tide to reveal that we can’t eat money. That the veil of keeping animals in cages for profit isn’t sustainable. It’s about personal responsibility and we have no power over nature itself. It is a tide we can’t turn with all the technology we have and even so would you really want to.

Our people believed in this region that moon was the older brother of the sun and that he gave up his power to reflect his light onto the creatures that are necessary for balance. It is not much different than the story of Thor and Loki. Mythology is a powerful thing and looking to the Salish sea working at the night time I feel all the more reason to do what I do and converse with the late hour gas station workers and nurses I know. I learn a lot from what makes the world work and why there is a low tide and a high tide. From that I am moved like a creature in the water exploring the surface when the moon is out. That is what this idea has taught me that needed to become a print.

Qwarentine here

As trying as times feel for us all. I like many artists feel the isoloation and in a lot of ways become used to it. Like anything though. It is the simple idea that you “can’t” do something even if not by your choice but another. So in this time of working in isolation one thing that brings me light in the darkness of this studio without windows I know life is thriving and more people are thinking.

I’ve always been a huge fan of nine inch nails but now more than ever I’ve been playing this track and talking to other friends in their studios. My heart goes out to all those lost to this virus. I personally am grateful that my grandmother who was my biggest inspiration in my life, did not have to suffer this anxiety of uncertainty. That said it reminds me how much we have to look out for those other grandparents, parents, sisters uncles and aunties, sons and daughters.

One great thing from this is talking to fellow creatives is the appreciation of what little we have and being resourceful. If anything I hope that lesson is taken from this from all. Resources are not infinite. The fact people would fight over toys at a store or a pair of new shoes I would hope is trivial.

That said for every person I met who said they valued my work and couldn’t draw a stick figure to save their life. I always wanted to say you can and you always could. Some people have been taught that they can’t and fall into a place of what they can’t be. I believe this is a time for reflection the earth set forth and there is no ideal time for things to happen. So if someone told you, YOU were going to face an epidemic in two months you can’t lie to yourself you’d have doubts. Ok, ok, don’t get me wrong there are those who have always lived this way with this in mind but it is like living with hopes of the disaster rather than living itself.

I’m moved at the moment by my friends in the high risk jobs and those who work in the arts that live job to job to literally feed themselves because I remember those days thinking to myself I’ll never have a family because I can’t even feed myself but somewhere in there I had a son to raise along the way and I never planned it but it changed my life for the better. It made me value life and I hope everyone out there is having this moment of revelation to connect and see the side of the ‘other’. Meaning that we are given this moment to look at and hopefully appreciate that money isn’t the answer to things, systems or net worth. It’s vision and listening and most of all feeling.

That’s my novel for today. Oh and here’s that song

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Innapropriation in Native Land

A picture is worth a thousand words. This is a piece I wanted to make 10 years ago for a show in Vancouver, BC but the funds weren’t in place. Regardless with my work in 3d I can tell the story with words and the image side by side.